[1] The term derives from the name of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician who discovered in 1847 that childbed fever mortality rates fell ten-fold when doctors disinfected their hands with a chlorine solution before moving from one patient to another, or, most particularly, after an autopsy.
Semmelweis's procedure saved many lives by stopping the ongoing contamination of patients (mostly pregnant women) with what he termed "cadaverous particles", twenty years before germ theory was discovered.
[4] In Wilson's book The Game of Life, Timothy Leary provided the following polemical definition of the Semmelweis reflex: "Mob behavior found among primates and larval hominids on undeveloped planets, in which a discovery of important scientific fact is punished".
[citation needed] In the preface to the fiftieth anniversary edition of his book The Myth of Mental Illness, Thomas Szasz says that Semmelweis's biography impressed upon him at a young age, a "deep sense of the invincible social power of false truths.
[12] The Semmelweis proposal was met with unanimous rejection and hostility from the medical community in the 19th century, exemplifying the phenomenon of groupthink, where consensus overrides consideration of alternatives.
[8] Research on barriers to the transmission of new ideas highlights the challenge of adopting innovative concepts, especially when they are perceived as superior by external entities, as this could pose a threat to the collective pride of the group.
As the epidemiologist Christopher Dye says, “What the WHO says is normally based on a consensus of expert advice and opinion.”[16] To mitigate the Semmelweis reflex, one needs to critically evaluate beliefs that are taken for granted, which requires the deliberate engagement of system 2 thinking.